Friday, April 03, 2009

ESPN is obviously heavily vested in Todd McShay, but it has come at the expensive of Mel Kiper. Well now ESPN is sending McShay to the Draft, to ultimately steal some of Kiper's thunder, and stage fake fights between the two, ala Salisbury and Clayton. Via USA Today....

Here's how far the notion of the TV NFL draftnik has evolved: Mel Kiper, the category's inventor, will now face off against his Kiper 2.0 — Todd McShay, who this month will be added to ESPN's draft coverage.

Kiper will be in his usual perch at the New York draft site; McShay will be at ESPN's studios in Connecticut. McShay, who last year was on ESPNews' draft coverage, will also be equipped with the same type of video screen CNN used on its election coverage, largely to zoom in on geographic areas. Rothman says: "I hate to call it our John King/CNN board, but it's the same technology. But we're not going to Google Earth the Pop Warner fields these kids played on. We'll use it to show things like best available players."

McShay's take on the board: "It's an enormous iPhone, NFL version."

Heated point-counterpoint segments are now common across TV as a handy way to convert any issue into harrumph-filled theatrics. But McShay says, "One nice thing is I've never felt that pressure, and I think Mel would agree. I don't change my opinion just to be argumentative."

Ummm, I would beg to differ on that point, but all that matters is what he ultimately believes in his heart. I have no idea when on-air fighting became the norm in the world of Sports, and while it has worked to some degree, at some point it becomes too much (i.e.- Clayton and Salisbury). When it gets to the point where it starts distracting the viewer, it's time to change things up. Hopefully that doesn't happen to the Draft.

(Oh and ESPN, I apologize for the above picture. For some reason there are no photos of the two on the media website, and that was all I could find. You have to admit it's pretty funny though.)

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Comments:

They saw Wilbon & Kornheiser and they thought people watched PTI because they argued. It's amazing that one of ESPN's best shows has spawned so many of their worst shows and segments.

I am officially done with caring about the draft. It used to be a fun niche event that I got into for one weekend in a downtime for sports. But the months and months of mock drafts and arguing has lost me completely.

AA, you missed the Thursday night SportsCenter where Boutagross was cracking on Mel Kiper, culminating with a picture of Scott Van Pelt apearing with Kiper's "salad". Hilarious. They followed that up with a segment with Barry Melrose for an April Fool's top ten. Funny stuff.

These two buffoons can argue all they want, and they'd still be the worst draft analysts supported by a major media company, McShay in particular. Mayock puts both of these guys to shame (and to an unbelievable extent).

BTW, AA, there was a great segment on College Gameday with Jay Bilas breaking down some of Villanova's key offensive plays on the court, with 10 players to simulate offense and defense. I thought, "Damn, this is the type of stuff that will actually make me watch ESPN more than a few minutes a day." I wonder if you have access clip. I figure you'd enjoy it, too.